Bagram Airbase exit and turnover

Just a few thoughts.
The media is making it sound like we took off in the middle of the night and the Afghans were not notified (which isn't a bad idea), but I think they knew what was going on.

It sounds like we left a lot of weapons, vehicles and even some aircraft up for grabs. I don't get it.

It also sounds like we are turning our backs on many Afghan interpreters and translators who's future is bleak if they can't get out. I don't get that either.

Could be a real hotbed there in the next few weeks.

Sounds like pretty standard procedure to me so far.

I want my tax dollars back.

interesting to have not heard anything about what you're referring to, from anywhere else yet. What's going on?

I've found a few sources now that I go looking for it - but none of them instill confidence in anything... go figure.

Link??

I read something on this on Fox News maybe a week or so ago. Didn't give a lot of detail that I recall. Some of the shit our gov't does just leaves me shaking my head.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/05/bagram...e-afghan-base/

My bet is the Afghan military will collapse within a week.

https://www.reuters.com/news/picture...s-idUSRTXE0GO8

Does anybody know what our troop strength had been over there recently?

A few thousand folks sequestered in the perimeter with minimal casualties who possess the ABILITY to respond and keep the the lid on things is not unreasonable compared to letting things degrade back into a free-for-all that unfortunately may need to be addressed again in the future with far more assets.

There is not an ideal solution, but at best a management of negatives.

They needed better targets for practice...

I spent a lot of time there over the past almost 20 years. My first time there there wasnt much other than what the Russians left behind.

Just like we did in Baghdad and places like it, we leave a lot of stuff behind. All of it mostly broken.

The only good thing to come out of my times there was being able to fly into the dirt strip in Bamyan. About my only good memory of that place.

New foreign policy is KMAG YOYO. 7 trillion dollars down the drain. At least Space Force got a 17% budget increase.

I remember being there in 03-04 with the 10th Mountain. It was just the runway with a couple of hangars that we put up a bunch of GP mediums next to. The smells that would waft around from the local populace on hot days was rivaled only by that of a mass grave I was unfortunate to be at in Bosnia.

This sounds like the way we evacuated Vietnam. Years of fighting, thousands of wasted lives, untold billions in wasted dollars and half the equipment in country left behind.

I'm sure they didn't tell most of the locals about the specific date they were leaving because they knew that the locals would tell the Taliban who would of course try to mount an attack, for propaganda purposes.

Withdrawing from an active combat zone is a very dangerous task so I can't fault the military for doing it this way.

As far as the stuff left behind, I'm sure most of it was broken or it would cost more to bring it back to the US than to just leave it there.

The waste of war is something that doesn't make the history books most of the time, as it's just not that interesting to people. Same thing happened at the end of WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc. Think of rows of trucks and other equipment buried in sand, airplanes pushed off the decks of ships and allowed to plummet to the bottom of the ocean, generators just left to rust in a forest somewhere, boxes of office equipment thrown into a burn pit and incinerated etc, etc. And all that stuff was paid for by the taxpayers.

War is an incredibly wasteful endeavor, and always has been.

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Originally Posted by JTP80

I remember being there in 03-04 with the 10th Mountain. It was just the runway with a couple of hangars that we put up a bunch of GP mediums next to. The smells that would waft around from the local populace on hot days was rivaled only by that of a mass grave I was unfortunate to be at in Bosnia.

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Yeah they still had the tents when I was there in '03 but they were just starting to build the plywood barracks buildings. I actually didn't mind Bagram, but then again I was there in Winter/Spring so I didn't have to experience the heat of Summer. I thought the Hindu Kush mountains were stunning and got some great sunset and sunrise photos there.

By contrast, my next (and last) deployment was to Kuwait. Talk about an ugly, hideous place. 120+ summer temps and 80% humidity. The stench from chemical plants wafting through the air most of the time. and as for "terrain", Kuwait pretty much has ONE terrain feature, Mutla'a Ridge. The rest of it is just flat sand, miles and miles and miles of sand.

The funny thing about Kuwait is that the population is very wealthy. That seems strange to me because if I lived there and had money, the first thing I'd buy would be a one way ticket to anywhere else.

Sounds like par for the course for the Obama/Biden team. I have a word for it but not worth putting it out on the Internet.

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Originally Posted by Aloha_Shooter

Sounds like par for the course for the Obama/Biden team. I have a word for it but not worth putting it out on the Internet.

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How is this any different than any other conflict we've ever left?

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Originally Posted by Irving

How is this any different than any other conflict we've ever left?

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Leaving behind equipment which is broken and not worth bringing back is common. What is different is the way Obama/Biden utterly abandon our allies because they aren't useful to their US domestic agenda.

https://www.euronews.com/2021/07/09/...special-report

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Special Report-Afghan pilots assassinated by Taliban as U.S. withdraws

KABUL, – Afghan Air Force Major Dastagir Zamaray had grown so fearful of Taliban assassinations of off-duty forces in Kabul that he decided to sell his home to move to a safer pocket of Afghanistan’s sprawling capital.

Instead of being greeted by a prospective buyer at his realtor’s office earlier this year, the 41-year-old pilot was confronted by a gunman who walked inside and, without a word, fatally shot the real estate agent in the mouth.

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While we did leave behind some allies in Vietnam to face the ravages of the NVA, the US did make a lot of efforts to help people get out and resettle here. The Obama/Biden crowd pretty much took the attitude that these people were associated with Bush and therefore disposable.

I hear about us trying to bring translators here like we did with the Hmong, but every time I hear about it, it is pitched in a way that makes it sound bureaucratically difficult and rare.

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Originally Posted by Irving

I hear about us trying to bring translators here like we did with the Hmong, but every time I hear about it, it is pitched in a way that makes it sound bureaucratically difficult and rare.

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Of course you're hearing it that way (unironically coming from the same people who are making it bureaucratically difficult and rare) -- that way they can abandon these people while making it seem like they're sympathetic. It's much like the Democrats who said they "support the troops" by pushing social programs while denying those same troops the funding for training, maintenance, gear, replenishment, etc. Or the Democrats who say Republicans were voting to defund the police when they were the ones not only yelling it out loud but pushing budgets with severe cuts to police funding or inserting poison pills to maintain current funding.

Know them by their actions, not their words.

Don't fall too deep into the Kazoo trap of just assuming that "these are the same people that..." with no support what so ever. The only time I've heard about this, is from soldiers trying to get their interpreters and their families over here.